The Ultimate Guide To Steemit Payouts

A while back, I produced series of FAQ posts on Steemit. Lately, with the huge influx of users, I've been getting quite a few comments on these old posts. Much of the information is outdated, so I thoughts it's time I make some new ones. One of the more popular posts is "Payouts" so that's where I'll start.

Payouts

When I make a blog post, there's a drop-down menu that says "rewards." The default is 50%/50%, what does this mean?

You can choose between three options for your post payout:

50%/50% - Half of your payment will be in Steem Dollars and the other half in Steem Power.

Power Up 100% - Your entire payout will be in Steem Power.

Decline Payout - You won't receive a payout.

When will I receive my payout?

All payouts occur exactly 7 days after your post or comment is made.

Why does my future payout keep changing?

Upvotes will increase your payout and flags will decrease your payout. If you haven't received any new upvotes or flags, there are several other reasons why your payout may have changed:

There is a fixed amount of new STEEM created each week to be dispersed to users as rewards in a rolling 7 day period. At any given time, the system is making an estimate of how much you will be paid based on what percentage of Steem Power-adjusted votes your post possesses.

Let's pretend a piece of content is currently worth $5. But then, many other posts suddenly become highly-upvoted. The money to pay those popular posts needs to come from somewhere, so a portion of your post's value is reallocated to these newly-popular posts. Now your post may only be worth $4.50.

Another reason your payout may change is price movements in the 3.5-day moving average of STEEM. If the price of STEEM increases, the value of your post will increase, all else equal.

My post said I was going to get paid $10, why did I only make $7.80?

The dollar figure you see at the bottom of your post or comment is not the amount of your payout. You, as the author, are guaranteed at least 75% of the total. As much as 25% goes to the curators (users who upvoted your post).

In this instance, you received $7.80 and the curators received $2.20.

If I was supposed to receive $7.80, why did I only get paid 3.9 Steem Dollars and 2 Steem Power?

When posting, you chose the default 50/50 payout option, so you received half of your payout in Steem Dollars. Half of $7.80 is $3.90. That is where the 3.9 Steem Dollars came from.

Since you received 2 Steem Power, that means the average price of STEEM over the duration of your post was $1.95. 2 Steem Power * $1.95 = $3.90. That is where the other 50% of your payout went.

How do reward distributions work?

The Steem network separates payouts into two categories, the author reward, and the curation reward:
The author is guaranteed at least 75%. Curators get up to 25%.

Author reward is paid out:

50% in Steem Power

50% in Steem Dollars, STEEM, or a combination of the two

Curation rewards are paid out:

100% in Steem Power

As mentioned above, at the time of posting, authors have the option to be paid 100% in Steem Power or to decline a payout altogether.

What determines how much of the curation reward goes to the author versus curators?

The payout split depends on how long after posting the vote was cast, using a linear function:

If a post is upvoted the moment of posting, 100% of the curation award goes to the author.

If a post is upvoted 30 min after posting, 100% of the curation award goes to the curator.

Between 0 and 30 minutes, each moment that passes, more of the reward goes to the curator.

At 15 minutes it's a 50/50 split.

At 3 minutes, 90% goes to the author and 10% to the curator.

At 27 minutes, 10% goes to the author and 90% to the curator.

I’m upvoting posts at the right time. Why am I not getting meaningful curation awards?

This is a complicated topic, but keeping things more understandable - To receive meaningful curation rewards, you need a combination of:

Steem Power

High voting power

High voting weight

You must also upvote posts before they become popular and after some time has passed since posting.

Upvoting posts that are already on the trending page isn't going to earn you much in curation rewards. Also, new users with very little Steem Power will be hard pressed to earn any curation rewards, even when voting optimally.

If you want to learn the complex math on the topic, I recommend reading @theoretical's post series on the topic.

Steem rewards users for commenting and upvoting. Why not for sharing?

You can gain curation rewards from resteeming. Not directly, but indirectly. The rewards that you earn will depend on how popular the post becomes after you upvote the post and share it with your followers.

If you find a post that you think will become popular, upvote it, then resteem it to your followers. The resteem will help the post become that much more popular. The result will be a higher curation reward for yourself.

yeah I want to know how this works.. Like say you make the post and its so dope it gets listed on the serps but its after a week. Say im a whale and find it after a week from a search engine and I upvote it.. Do I get a payout from that whale upvote or after 7 days is the article oayour void. If its void then thats some booty.

Exactly, that is what I was searching for hours and I tried to upvote the posts, but for 7 days or more old posts nothing is changed in rewards. This is an essential aspect of steemit that I think it is better for newcomers to know.

Very well written. Bookmarked for my newbie coworkers. I had difficulty explaing curation in correlation to popularity and timing. Some where I read it's better to upvote before there are thirty upvotes.

Thank you. While it's true that voting before others will give you more curation rewards than the people who vote after you, don't listen to that "thirty upvotes" number you heard. It's a pretty useless number. Who voted before you is much more important.

The curation system is designed to reward you for discovering great posts before they become popular, and disincentive voting for posts just because you know they'll become popular.

After 30 minutes, 100% of the curation rewards go to the curator. None go to the author. Although, it's looking like this 30-minute window will be changed in the next Steem Hard Fork. It's changing to 15 minutes if I remember right.

Thanks for your reply @shenanigator. I look forward to exploring your older content to find more nuggets of information. I learned the most from your blog than many blogs combined. Keep you the great work. You are appreciated.

For this example, let's assume STEEM is Trading at an average price of $2.00.

If you earn $10 on a post and you choose "Power Up 100%," you'll receive 5 Steem Power.

Now, instead of "Power Up 100%," you choose a 50/50 payout:

You'll receive 2.5 Steem Power and 5 Steem Dollars.

If you go to steemdollar.com, you'll see that a Steem Dollar is worth $1.71 (price changes all the time). This means you can sell your 5 Steem Dollars on an exchange for $8.55. With your $8.55, you could buy 4.275 Steem Power. By choosing 50/50 instead of 100% SP, you got 6.775 Steem Power instead of 5 Steem Power.

The lesson here is this: Any time Steem Dollars are trading above $1.00, choose 50/50 payout and sell your Steem Dollars on an exchange.

Because in that example steem was valued at $2.00 and he was describing 50/50 reward selection - 50% steem power and 50% steem dollars.

The steem power you would recieve gets cut in half in this example because its valued at twice as much as steem dollars. If it was valued at $1 you would have recieved the 5/5 but at $2 you get half as much.

You would only get 5 Steem Power if a single STEEM was worth $1. In my example, Steem was priced at $2. If the Steem price were $5, you'd only get 1 Steem Power. A $0.10 Steem price would result in you getting 50 Steem Power.

Wow! This made things so much clearer! Thanks so much for this article.
If I were to resteem this article, do you get any benefit from it, if so what?
Also, do I get any added benefit from it (Reputation?), beyond helping my followers understand the steemit platform, of course..?

If I were to resteem this article, do you get any benefit from it, if so what?

Since it is past the 7-day payout window, I can't earn anymore on this post. But I may earn some followers from your resteem, which might benefit me in the future.

Also, do I get any added benefit from it (Reputation?), beyond helping my followers understand the steemit platform, of course..?

Not really.

How does a higher reputation number help, exactly?

Users might be more likely to read a post if it's written by someone with a higher reputation.

Also, if I flag you, since my reputation is higher than yours, my flag will negatively effect your reputation. However, if you flag me, my reputation is unaffected since your reputation is lower than mine.

Lastly, the higher your reputation, the more you affect others' reputation with your upvotes. For example, if we both have 100k SP and upvote a newbie, my vote is going to have more effect on their reputation than your vote because my reputation is higher.

There's a possibility that at some point in the future the protocol will be changed to have reputation play more or less of a role.

Thank you! This was very helpful and cleared up a few questions for me. The curation rewards and resteeming info helped me the most. Also, I've added this article to the front page of the WelcomeToSteemit.com website, here. Thanks again!

Hi, If I make a comment (like this one) and it gets upvoted, how much of the vote goes to the comment author? Does any of that vote go to the people who comment on my comment? Also how long before comment votes are paid out? Thanks!

Thanks! I think this is one of the biggest things people have a hard time understanding on Steemit, and this is a hugely helpful article. The format is easy to understand. Better than Steemit itself explains. Nice job on this.

Thanks for this summary. The thing I could never understand is this 30 minute rule on giving part of the curator award to the author. If people want to make money on steemit (and i know some really just love blogging) why would they upvote as soon as a post is published and give all or most if the curator award away. 🤔

Thanks for your comment. I don't think it's a bad thing to vote early (when most of the curation rewards go to the author). Sure, it probably means you'll get less of a reward. But it might also result in a more successful platform due to the best content being upvoted. It's not always about how much Steem you're going to earn as a curator.

Thanks, and i dont have an issue with improving the quality of the blogging space because thats the whole purpose of blogging. Its just that ive seen quite a lot of bloggers talk about how to increase or maximise their earnings so always think this 30 minute go against what they want to achieve ...just curious thats all, not that it would make any difference to when i upvote a post, if i see something i like, it gets my upvote regardless of if it was posted 10 seconds or 10 days ago

Rewards can be given many times each day. Let's say you make a comment at 9am, then another comment at 9:03am. If both of those comments get upvoted, 7 days later you're going to receive 2 separate payouts 3 minutes apart. Does that make sense?

Is that because blog post rewards and curation rewards are handled seperately?

Blog post rewards and the curation rewards associated with that blog post will pay out at exactly the same time.

This is very helpful. I will admit that a lot of this sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher when people tell this to me, but if I read this a few times, I might figure it out. Lol! Thanks for being so informative!

The tabs located on the wallet page to redeem rewards or buy Steem have vanished for me, have been missing for a few days now and logging in and out did not resolve the issue. Anybody else having the same issue? has there been a change?

The "Redeem Rewards" button only shows up on the wallet page when there are rewards you haven't redeemed. I'm not sure about the "Buy Steem" concern. If you click the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner of the page, you'll see another button to purchase steem.

Thanks It is very odd, I am active most days commenting and there was always at least claim rewards: 0.001 STEEM POWER to collect showing each day and suddenly nothing for 4-5 days. Will wait and see, actually wondering if it is possible to be hacked and your rewards diverted to another account!

I looks like you went 6 days without commenting on any posts. 2 days from now, you'll get a payout from a comment of yours. I just upvoted it, so you'll get a bit of a payout for it. If you don't get that payout, then there's something to look into. But, I suspect there's nothing out of the ordinary here.

It's possible that your voting power was higher then. Now, you may have used more of your voting power, which could result in your curation rewards not meeting the minimum .001 Steem Power. If it's not at least .001, you earn nothing.

I have been wondering about post payout. When we upvote a post when it has already picked up some steem. Let's say $100 will my vote count more?

That used to be the case, but no, your vote should be worth about the same no matter how much the post is worth. I say "about the same" because it depends on the strength of your vote, your voting power, other users' voting habits, and the price of STEEM. But all else equal, your vote will be worth the same whether the post is at $1,000 or $0.

Hmmm... I am still not 100% convinced of this. After some testing. Giving a few posts a 5% vote. (Carefully checking that there are no votes in between) the vote amount fluctuates. From 0.01 all the way up to 0.05

Any advice or thoughts on this. The reason I am asking is @randowhale recommend we vote after post has already got a decent amount of votes. This will give the post a bigger boost... Still the numbers don't make sense to me.

There are other factors contributing to changes in post valuation. For example, changes in price of STEEM, and the amount that other people are voting on the network as a whole).

High-dollar-value posts are very susceptible to these changes. If you go to a post that's worth $1,000, and refresh the post a few seconds later, the post value will probably change even if it doesn't have any new votes. Voting on a post also acts as a "refreshing."

I have a silly question : do you actually receive REAL MONEY or it's just some virtual thing. If yes, where do I enter my card number and other details in order to receive the money. (I'm totally new to this platform and all this talk about steem is very confusing)

You receive a virtual currency called Steem. Steem is traded on open markets, kind of like stocks, which gives it a "real-world value." One Steem is currently worth a little over $4 each. There are ways to cash it out into US dollars, British pounds, other government currencies, precious metals, or many other things.

It's not quite that simple. It's displayed in USD, but it doesn't take into account the market price of SBD. With 50/50 payout selected, if you earn $10 on a post, you'll get $5 USD worth of Steem Power, and you'll get 5 SBD. If SBD are trading at $1, your 5 SBD are worth $5 USD. But if SBD are trading at $10, your 5 SBD are worth $50 USD.

USD is what the creators decided to price things in on the platform. That can be changed at any time with a hard fork. It could be priced in gold, silver, pesos, rubles, yuan, or many other things. There's a Russian form of Steem called Golos which decided to price things in terms of gold.

If you were to read the original whitepaper, you'd see that SBD was created as a smart contract that was always supposed to be worth about $1. Clearly, that's not the case, but if it had worked as planned, there wouldn't be much difference between pricing it in SBD and USD.

I was wondering... you can only put up to five tags on a post but anyone can add more tags in a post using the #hashtag (can you see the irony lol) like #this. Does the hashtag help posts get found by search engines like google?

It used to be the case that you could have a total of 5, regardless of whether they were in the hashtag box or in the form of "#" within the body of the post. As far as I know, this is still the case, but I'm not sure.

As far as SEO purposes go - I'm not an expert in that area and I can't give you the good answer. To the best of my knowledge, the title and the content matter a lot more than any hashtags.

Ok thanks. Hashtags can show trends like on twitter and are used by marketing companies for statistical analysis. If you click a hashtag for example, you see all the recent posts with the same hashtag. Try it 😊

Thanks for the great breakdown....I am new and this is the most confusing part of Steemit. But now I have bookmarked your post so I can go over it until I 'get it.' Thanks for offering your help at the end of your post--I may be back with questions.
hanks

The Steemit internal market is going to be your best bet to avoid paying trading fees, but there's low volume, and you can only trade between Steem and Steem Dollars. I don't know of any online market that doesn't charge fees.

Wow, this is a really great post. You are very good at explaining things and the simple manner in which you laid everything out is much appreciated. You should consider writing another post like this with updated figures. Clearly, there are a lot of people interested this type of post.

If you're wanting US Dollars, you can send Steem or Steem Dollars to an exchange like bittrex, poloniex, or blocktrades, and trade it for another currency like Litecoin. Then send your Litecoin over to a website like Coinbase, where you can exchange it for US Dollars, and deposit it in your bank account.

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